You spend so much time listening to music in general (or more specifically music like this), and sometimes that base initial sensation can wash away. But there is still that negative flip-side casting shadow upon the groups that get left out of end-of-year lists and major coverage - ones that slip beneath the radar despite having released quality work worth the engagement. Platitudes are meant with pure intentions: to lift out records and bands that are wonderful and give them the brightest and biggest possible stage to succeed.
Sometimes, though, these easy narratives we cling to as listeners and critics, occlude and obscure not just single records or bands but entire active scenes. It can sometimes be annoying and an easy temptation to swat away cries like "OSDM revival is actually killing death metal" or "screamo influence is diluting real black metal" - the underlying points, whether stated well or not, are still validly debatable. For every moment we seem to grasp, however tentatively, some new fertile genre space expands or some returning old giant wields its might again still, some always find a quick counter-action, whether it be in the comments sections of Facebook and music blogs or floating out on the tides of social media. Im Wald is an album to get lost in, and its naturalistic, freezing forest approach makes it a perfect refuge in these days of confinement.The problem is that the shape of art resists those attempts at easy parcelling. It feels both anachronistic and otherworldly. Throughout its astounding 120 minutes, the music takes you straight into an endtime scenario, skillfully using black metal’s typical lo-fi, low-tech production to build ambiances of decay, but also taking advantage of digital recording technologies to create a wider sound design space. Paysage d’Hiver’s Im Wald - officially the Swiss project’s first album, after two decades of legendary demos and splits - offers a new gold standard for extreme metal.
But there’s one record that can truly be considered essential music.
Its dark themes and its emphasis of isolation make it the perfect encapsulation of this dumpster-fire of a world we live in. In the midst of a global pandemic that has taken the lives of millions, perhaps black metal is the one form of music that can make sense of these feelings of dread and apocalyptic expectations.
0 kommentar(er)
